Karen Bradley: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I agree that the BBC must be protected and sustained. The work we have done on this charter will ensure that the BBC can not just survive, but flourish in a new era. This is not the world where everybody sat down and watched the same programme at the same time; people are accessing TV programmes in entirely different ways, and we want to make sure that the charter gives the BBC the sustainable footing it needs.
For the first time, we have made it an 11-year charter in order that it does not coincide with the electoral cycle and there cannot be seen to be political influence on the charter renewal. In addition, we want to make sure that this is the longest charter ever. Therefore, a mid-term review to ensure that the BBC is still delivering what licence fee payers, which we all are, want to see is a very important part of our proposals.
I must pick the hon. Gentleman up on his point about the deputy chair. There is no longer a deputy chair within the board’s structure. There are a chair and four nation members who will be Government appointments—public appointments. It is important that we have a member for each of the nations on the board and that they are full public appointments, and that the chair is an open and transparent public appointment. We are not appointing a deputy chair; it will be for the board to determine who the senior independent director should be.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about ensuring that there is distinctiveness. The words on distinctiveness are taken from the White Paper, which was the result of the consultation to which we had 190,000 responses—the largest consultation of its kind. I accept his point about making sure that there is a difference between Channel 4 and the BBC, but the distinctiveness of the BBC is what makes it so great for licence fee payers and for us as a nation. It is the thing that makes the BBC something that we can sell across the world. I doubt that any of us who went abroad over the summer did not come into contact with some form of BBC content, programming or original idea that was being shown or talked about locally.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about editorial independence. The charter sets out that there is editorial independence and ensures that the BBC is entirely independent. Although the public appointments will go through the full public appointments process, once they are board members, they will be BBC Board members who work towards ensuring that the BBC is the greatest it can be.
Finally, on funding and the over-75s’ TV licences, the director-general, Tony Hall, said in July 2015:
“The government’s decision here to put the cost of the over-75s on us has been more than matched by the deal coming back for the BBC.”

Karen Bradley: As I pointed out to the hon. Lady’s colleague the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), BBC Alba is a wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC, whereas S4C is not. However, I agree with her that there is some fantastic broadcasting from Glasgow, and we do want to ensure that BBC Alba and others have the resources that they need.